30 Minutes of Fame

Our Christmas card pictures for 2009 were the four of us dressed up as pirates. It was a picture from the Disney cruise and it was the only decent picture of our family that was taken that year. Everyone ended up loving the cards so I decided it would be fun to dress up in costumes every year for our Christmas cards.

For 2010 I wanted us to all dress up as Johnny Depp characters (Sweeney Todd, Willy Wonka, Edward Scissorhands and The Mad Hatter.) I worked for months on the costumes and had so much fun! I bought almost everything I needed at Savers, a used clothing store. I changed the look of the clothes using dye and spray paint. I bought wigs and scissorhands on-line and rented a few things from a costume shop.

My friend Alisynn was going to take our pictures for us on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I wanted to have them taken at Wheeler Farm so I went there the week before our photo shoot to scope out a few good locations on the farm. It was freezing cold and no one was there except for a mom and her two little kids.

November 27th arrived and I woke up the kids so I could start getting them into their costumes and do their make-up. I was so excited but they were SO cranky and tired! They didn't want to waste their Saturday dressing up and having their pictures taken. They fussed the entire morning. They were ruining my Christmas card dream that I had worked so hard on and I was getting madder by the minute. At 10:30 I yelled at them to finish getting ready because Alisynn was meeting us at Wheeler Farm at 11:00 and we couldn't be late. Adam went through the roof when he heard we were going out in public to have our pictures taken. I assured him that no one would be at the Farm because it was 35 degrees outside.

I finally got everyone into the car and made the 15 minute drive to Wheeler Farm. Much to my horror, and the horror of my three passengers, the farm parking lot was packed! It was the day of the annual Bike Festival. Jeff was adamant that he wasn't going to get out of the car with crowds of people milling around. I finally found a parking spot in the last row and then called Alisynn on her cell phone. I told her we were too terrified to get out of the car in our costumes with so many people around. She told us there weren't any other places we could go where there wouldn't be any people around. I knew she was right. Very reluctantly, we opened the doors and jumped out. People in the parking lot immediately stopped and were staring at us. I just kept looking down at the asphalt. I couldnt' stand the thought of looking anyone in the eye. But as we started walking toward the barn, people started taking pictures of us with their cell phones. Alisynn ran up to us and said our costumes were amazing! I gained a little confidence.

When we walked into the barn to check in at the main office, there were a lot more people in there and I was embarrassed all over again. But people started going crazy over our costumes and naming our characters. I felt so good that they knew which characters we were. I started having fun and I was feeling pretty good. We walked all over Wheeler Farm and people kept taking our pictures. When we were posing for Alisynn, other people were taking pictures of us, too. We only stayed for 30 minutes because it was so cold. We were so disappointed to leave because we were all having a great time and we loved all of the attention!

When we got back to our car, I thanked the kids for being so great about posing for pictures in the cold. The kids told me they loved it. They said they would dress up every year and go to Wheeler Farm for our pictures. If we go there again in 2011, we'll make sure we're there on the same day as the Bike Festival!